Altermesh -- Blender Geometry Nodes in Unreal Engine!

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[@derakon4791]

Dude speak slowly pls 😁 😁 tnx for video

[@NOTORIOUS404]

in 2023 this doesn't seem to have any updates. Too bad...

[@dsonathar2295]

Judging by the video they show on their website, it looks like you can change settings (UMG Sliders) even in runtime, which Houdini Engine can't do. That's pretty nice. It will probably only work for simple geometry, but it's a start.

[@mechwarrior99_75]

It can't, it looked like that to me too so I checked third discord and their FAQ says it can't. This makes sense because the way both this and Houdini Engine work is that they open the software (in this case Blender) in a new processes and open the file in it, then they basically just send the parameter values to it and then grab the mesh that is generated with those changed values.

[@dsonathar2295]

@@mechwarrior99_75 Well, that's unfortunate. Thanks for letting us know. Have to check it out soon nevertheless.

[@workflowinmind]

Unfortunately not, Ozone is a fully runtime solution but haven't heard of it lately...

[@unicornhuntercg]

I don't think materials not working is a bug, the materials for the cupcake are procedurally made within blender's shader editor and I don't think there's a way to translate that to unreal materials yet.

[@olliveraira6122]

You can actually use Datasmtih, though the plugin for Blender is a little bit out of date (to make it work with 3.3 you have to hack the scripts a little, but its still functional, mostly)

[@grantbooher7]

@@olliveraira6122 have you managed to make a functional 3.3 version? the blender datasmith community has been begging for an updated plugin like crazy

[@wolfinabowl2129]

This is unbelievably cool, would love to see something like this as an official UE plugin. Imagine the power you'd have with this plus Nanite and Lumen.

[@saimon1987]

You can do those kind of things with blueprints. The thing is that this allows artists that know how to use geometry nodes to use them inside Unreal. But you can do many procedural things natively using blueprints in unreal.

[@alejmc]

Was thinking exactly this Nanite + easy access procedural anything is a pathway to amazing things. Question is Nanite is activated at the asset level right? I wonder if this ‘alter mesh’ object is treated as mesh that can be flagged as static, lightmap-able, Nanite, etc. (excuse me the wrong terms if any, haven’t really used Unreal)

[@vlogergames]

when geo nodes were first introduced I was like " great, hair particles but less iffy" Let me take that back now because HOLY CRAP THIS IS AWESOME

[@thawne4235]

Mind blowing stuff. It is a revolution in game dev... Runtime control over geometry? Dude we are living in the next era...

[@workflowinmind]

No runtime control, it uses Blender under the hood

[@DonutSurprise]

It needs export functionality to native UE actors, else it's a dependency with all it's custom created AlterMesh actors. That will break your project if it's not properly maintained/abandoned in the future, tying you to an old version of UE or Blender.

[@TorQueMoD]

Wow. this is definitely amazing. Gonna wait another year at least before I buy it, but wow it's impressive already.

[@CreativeSteve69]

I've been learning both ue5 and houdini past 4 monthths now. Fun programs. :)

[@deadpianist7494]

i will prefer blender( python) over Houdini (Vex) but yes houdini has everything

[@VitorGuerreiroVideos]

Their plugin popped up in my feeds some time ago, but never looked into it much. But, damn! This is super interesting! Probably worth the 100usd! Regarding the Materials not importing, I find that a GOOD thing and not an issue IMO. If I'm rendering in UE4 I always make my master materials in there and wouldn't want to use any automatic random stuff coming from blender. I'd rather just import texture maps and apply my materials derived from my created Master Materials within UE4. In any case, this is super interesting! Thanks for sharing this quick look, clarified somethings I wasn't sure when I first saw the tool!

[@VitorGuerreiroVideos]

@@freedomarts nope, I specifically said I disagree with the fact that importing materials generated automatically from blender is a good idea. I think it's NOT a good idea, especially considering everything will probably end up being just generated as Master Materials for every instance, which of course is bad practice. So, in the end, automatic material imports are generally more time wasted having to delete everything and then having to re-assign every input on the meshes. For me it's faster to just start with the correct approach from the get-go (create Master Materials with the desired features and properties, derive Instance Materials that then are used as input in the meshes, and sometimes even deriving Instanced Materials from other Instanced Materials, making it easier if most of the settings are similar).

[@workflowinmind]

@@VitorGuerreiroVideos Not sure how verse you are in UE4 but this is very easy to tackle especially if you enforce guidelines among your artists. We use Houdini Engine and everything is "automated" and it assigns our custom master materials instances on import. If you have to build every single material network you import into UE4, at scale you are loosing hours of useless actions imo

[@VitorGuerreiroVideos]

@@workflowinmind You need to read what I've wrote above again. It's bad practice to create new master materials for every asset you create. I don't have to create new material networks every time I import because I don't need to. I create a couple master materials,or re-use from other projects (depending on the features needed), that then will be derived into Instanced Materials, and those are what I use for every asset. So, essentially, I work with materials as part of my tooling. I start a project by creating Master Materials with Material Functions that would provide the desired features for each Master Material (usually one Master Material for the Terrain, another one for all the standard Static Meshes, and one for every Vegetation asset - are just the very basics for a generic level). Then I just derive Material Instances, just need to input de desired texture maps and settings, and if a specific asset requires a complex setup that requires lots of settings and is re-used widely, I just derive another Material Instance from the first Material Instance, so that the 'standard settings' are applied equally for every asset and from there there's even less setup to do. That said, be it from houdini or Blender, the issue from your approach is that you're creating TONS of Master Materials and zero instances, therefore loading a lot more into memory than I do with my couple Master Materials. Also, if you're smart with your assets and your material features, you can re-use A LOT, so there's even minimal Instancing bc lots of assets are re-using the same material, which means less draw calls. So, IDK how versed you are in UE4, but master materials, material functions, and deriving material instances allows you to avoid weird setups that you need to automatically create master materials, saves tons of performance cost, bc it's just instancing, and you only write one type of material once, just like when you write your code in your usuaal OOP language - yuo create classes and functions for efficiency, that's how I use materials in general. It's more efficient, saves tons of time, everything is inside UE, just need to import meshes and textures and that's it. The rest depends your your knowledge that allows you to setup properly flexible and feature-rich materials that your level may require. Oh, and btw, no need to "enforce guidelined among artists", since they only deal with Material Instances, that if properly setup have properly set value ranges, reasonable default values, etc. The artsits only need to deal with proper naming conventions and properly authored assets, they'll only need to deal with drag&dropping texture assets to inputs and setting up values according to the asset needs and material setup. I'd advise checking out example projects that both Epic and Quixel provide, those are amongst the best sources to learn this kind of workflow, along with your general art/asset creation knowledge that should allow you to double that efficiency, both in terms of producction and performance.

[@pixelsort]

@@VitorGuerreiroVideos I don't know how well you know UE4 but... 🤣 I love how you stayed classy while dropping this deep knowledge bomb on this poor old consultant dude who came in hot.

[@13thxenos]

This is amazing. I really thing Geometry node is one of the greatest improvements that Blender ever had, on the scales of adding Cycles. And to see we can use it in Unreal is unreal. These two programs keeps getting better and better. Now if only we could have something similar in Godot... Btw, I don't think materials are something you can easily import. Textures sure, but I believe materials are inherently different between different renderers, and Cycles and Unreal's renderer aren't matched like Cycles and EEVEE. So I don't think it is such an easy process.

[@somedude5951]

Geometry nodes in Godot can be made using GDscript.

[@13thxenos]

@@somedude5951 How? Can you import a Geometry Node setup in Godot with GDScript? Or are you saying that you can make a similar functionality with coding?

[@somedude5951]

@@13thxenos Similar functionality with coding.

[@saul8510]

well godot as i seen can convert blender shaders to godot shaders, but it might not work much, because of bugs or fixed needed. But i wish someday we will get it

[@olory3869]

maybe the center problem comes from the fact you don't import an object but an entire scene. So the center point may - perhaps be the center of the entire scene in blender , rather than the center point of the main object.

[@MusicalGeniusBar]

The biggest thing is you can use this to import blend files without converting it to an unreal object.

[@SoftYoda]

Do you use it for non Geometry node object ?

[@HuanLeVuong]

Give that dev a #MegaGrant!

[@wadeeliason969]

I just saw this. looks very interesting. I have been diving into Geo Nodes this year. its cool that you can use them in UE

[@mbox8]

A new open source Houdini is coming ; )

[@deadpianist7494]

wuttt source link pls

[@unicornhuntercg]

@@deadpianist7494 ...i think they were talking abt blender

[@mbox8]

@@deadpianist7494 I mean Blendini, haha

[@deadpianist7494]

@@mbox8 lmao is it going to be the child of blender and houdini

[@RichardAllen7753]

This will inevitably lead to much easier import export workflows overall. But yeah materials work differently between Blender and Unreal.

[@AinurEru]

Why is thig plugin always making UE's Editor GUI all glitchy? You see those glitches in every video covering it..

[@workflowinmind]

UE4 is glitchy especially when recording without NVIDIA xp

[@normal_vector]

It's worth noting that Unreal Engine 5 now has it's own Dynamic Mesh Component which provides Blueprint nodes to build procedural geometry like this, and can also be used during gameplay. As yet it's experimental but it does drive the procedural geometry part of the Lyra game kit (as showcased at kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYuvmpWfa9iSm9k), and there are some useful starter tutorials on the page of Ryan Schmidt (one of the Epic engineers) at kzbin.info/door/gyn96mMYeVKcheUA4mgaFA

[@Ecceptor]

but they didn't use it for the matrix demo tho.

[@psy237]

THANKS!!

[@gazablife4065]

Awesomeness 👌 hope material issue is fixed in new versions.

[@tugcesen6421]

hello, I have UE5.4.1 AND I have tried altered mesh UE5.1-UE5.2-UE5.3 but none of them worked. Every time it says my project could not be compiled and please try rebuilding from source manually. How can I fix it? I need this plugin urgently :(

[@faradaysinfinity]

I've been waiting for this

[@pekkavaisanen5657]

This will put SideFX out of business

[@fleurbird]

Nodevember 2022 will be crazy!

[@deadpianist7494]

imagine Nodevember in 2030, "hello alexa build a procedural city in blender and import that in unreal with nanite."

[@mitchellhoover5646]

Where are you finding the 4.27 project? All i saw on gumroad was their old 4.26 one.

[@IlseMulAuthor]

Thanks for this video! It sure seems interesting. The commercial version is much better priced than Blender Geonodes: Embedded.....

[@zimnelredoran9985]

This is what I would want to port Substance Designer exposed nodes into Unity :_____ It's an awesome module for sure.

[@moravianlion3108]

Maybe I missed that information, but does this also work with stuff like game collisions, navmesh creation/alteration etc.? Or it's purely only models we can see, but can't physically interact with?

[@UnchartedWorlds]

So it's going to be like Houdini, ie Blendini 🤘😁👌👌👌🤝🤝👏👏

[@TomMooneyUE4]

Does the geometry nodes graph have a way to put an Input variable into the graph without wiring it? For example, in unreal BP, inputs on a function can be just called as variable getters.

[@d4t4d13b]

Only thing I am wondering about where do I set the Lightmap Resolution for the Assets imported this way.

[@mylopintorizvi4349]

will you cover blender metal support, its just landed in the dev builds

[@Thunder_Owl]

Yep, I started to follow this development even before release (Twitter is your friend). Cool "merge".

[@cickmiss5077]

Will you continue to update this plug-in?

[@云井彰]

Can I render Altermesh asset without converting to static meshes?If there's a bunch of stuff,converting them can be a headache.

[@zenmasters_games]

This is really good stuff.

Really well explained!

[@eclecticgamer5144]

You happen to know if we can access the custom properties (like cup base) inside of blueprints? Say we want a blueprint to spawn 5 randomly generated cupcakes. Is that doable?

[@eclecticgamer5144]

To answer my own question, for those who have the same: Yes. *All* parameters are alterable in blueprints.

[@christianrudorff9307]

Anyone know how to get a proper lightbuild in UE4 with AlterMesh GeoNodes? As is seems when u set the meshes to static its generating wierd surrealshaped shadows.

[@grixxy_666]

"The amount of cream on top of our guy here" O_____________O;

[@lifeartstudios6207]

ABOUT TIME! YASSS

[@NightShinerStudio]

Is there something like this for unity?

[@qiangzheng7823]

Hi bro，I have some problem My plugin doesn't seem to be working, I see something like this in the output log: Warning: Failed to load '/Game/AlterMesh/ClosedSplineMesh': Can't find file.LogUObjectGlobals: Warning: Failed to find object 'Object None./Game/AlterMesh/PoissonSampling' so can you help me, thanks a lot, great work!

[@summerWTFE]

Game changer for sure

[@Terra_5]

my geometry node from Blender gets stuck on loading when i try import it to UE5, do i miss something? i save the file, have the plugin in a project working and connected the folder to blender in project settings, does the blender file have to be in some format or what am i missing?

[@amused-qg9tw]

I had the same problem in 5.3, worked in 5.2!

[@adrianscarlett]

There's a lot of hype for geometry nodes, how do they compare to doing things with python script?

[@sonario6489]

As of right now, Python is better, as it lets you do a lot more things, but that also requires modeling manually so you can get the code. However, Geometry Nodes is getting new features with every major release, so we'll eventually have all the modeling tools as nodes

[@abdulsadiq8873]

Shoutout to cupcake city, this is awesome

[@prototype9000]

only if could actually save the animations in your mesh

[@MR3DDev]

Cool, I am still learning Houdini tho xD

[@alejandrocambraherrera8242]

I think itʼs normal materials donʼt carry over, the plugin only converts geometry nodes, not shaders.

[@DirkTeucher]

Game changer

[@manufacturingdissent666]

swallows a greeny :) 7mins in

[@alekjwrgnwekfgn]

This is 🌰 nuts 🥜 .

[@unnamed7462]

well, that's interesting

[@KaletheQuick]

Damn. I just started trying to do something similar in Godot. But open source.

[@pawpotsRS]

came from Entagma XD

[@sicfxmusic]

Houdini be like: *_Hey, Junior....!!_*

[@nvm3344]

Wow.. UE5’s Nanite mesh has a match.. it’s called “AlterMesh”

[@Bloodlinedev]

Cries in Unity

[@SunSailor]

And now the same for Unity please :)

[@redragon1229]

Archimatix is pretty much the same but cheaper and much more developed.

[@saniel2748]

This kinda reminds me of Haudini

[@trafficface]

I have a blender 3 shed generator 😂why? I dream to work outdoors

[@Tokamak_9]

I need such a tool for Godot!

[@tomoprime217]

He watched AskNK!

[@AinurEru]

"Geometry Nodes are the 'Future'!" (??) Ahm: ICE (Softimage), Max Creation Graph (3ds Max), MASH (Maya), Fabric Engine, Houdini (..) What are ya'll smokin here..? It's Blender catching up to decade-old tech. (..finally..)

[@workflowinmind]

Nobody said Blender invented node networks, half of the ones you mentioned are deprecated btw.

[@AinurEru]

@@workflowinmind...which kinda proves the point even further, it’s catching out with deprecated tech. The video sells it as “Ushering a new era of geometry creation in DCC software” as if nobody ever known anything like it, oblivious to the history around that space of tech.

[@line1611]

First

[@UnchartedWorlds]

Lol, no I was

[@toolazytobeoriginal4587]

@@UnchartedWorlds actually line was first, your message says 24 minutes ago while his says 25

[@UnchartedWorlds]

@@toolazytobeoriginal4587 funny my message said 10 minutes while his said 9 minutes, when I responded to his comment

[@toolazytobeoriginal4587]

@@UnchartedWorlds Thats so youtube (insert laughtrack)

[@sanyi9667]

the most useless tool by far. UE has blender link that can export anything from blender to UE just with a push of a button. this tool doesn't even work and costs a lot of money. what a joke

[@ninthjake]

There's a free version and the video is literally showing it working. What are you on about?

[@workflowinmind]

Lol...What do you even mean? It fills the gap for many many many workflows. It might not suit yours but this is just your opinion

[@Ecceptor]

If you think this is useless. watch UE5 Making of the Matrix. how they used Houdini for these type of procedural workflow.

[@deadpianist7494]

i wish that unreal(Epic) will buy this for 100$ and make it available for free